Form Follows Function

A small haven for vintage Volkswagens

Feature Article from Hemmings Motor News

Two years ago, when John Henry moved into his new home in Dunstable, Massachusetts, he realized a life-long dream: to have a separate building for his collection of 1950s-era Beetles.

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When he moved in, the 22 x 22 foot building was closed in, but unfinished. Only 12 feet from his house (which has its own two-car garage), John insulated the bare stud walls and covered it all with sheetrock. He installed a Quincy compressor in one corner, and hooked it up to copper tubing throughout the building, with a pull-down air hose reel above his bench. "It's one of those things that once you have it," John said, "you don't know how you lived without it."
When John began finishing the interior, he found the builder had run two two-inch conduits underground into it from the main building. He uses one to deliver natural gas for the furnace, and fed a high-speed internet/cable/phone line through the other, although it isn't hooked up yet.
It's heated with a Ruud 100,000 BTU gas furnace, the hot air stirred by a "cheap ceiling fan. I absolutely get to work in here in the cold New England winters." With that fan and the ceiling only 10 feet up, there's no room for a lift. But John says that a bare VW body shell weighs in at about 240 pounds. "If you're really strong enough, you can stand up inside them, straighten your arms and walk around like a turtle in its shell."
Along the walls are 22 feet of workbench space, mostly built from 2 x 4 framing. John works for a medical electronics company as a network engineer, but as a sideline, he reproduces some early VW parts for specific years though his ZAR Werks Web site. He makes an early intake manifold, heater box, and with his partner in Wisconsin, does some speedometer restoration. He also makes a reproduction cloth wiring harness for 1952-and-earlier VWs--to the best of his knowledge, he's the only one in the world doing it. Three of his own Beetles reside in the building: a 1950 Deluxe Sunroof Beetle; a 1957 Deluxe Sedan he restored; and a 1951 Standard Sunroof currently in restoration.
The tight quarters called for some creativity in the overall configuration of the building. John says there are 38 wheels on the floor, not counting the cars. Almost everything's on casters, including a pair of sandblasting cabinets, one for glass bead, and one for iron oxide, both on rolling dollies he made. They used to have a common exhaust from an old microwave oven hood, but it eventually clogged up. John's been looking into a central filtration system, but for now it's an open-door policy.
There's some creativity in the decoration as well. A 1951 Beetle dash with a pastoral scene, which came out of a donor car, hangs over one door. He's retrofitted the clock to run on a battery, and it now keeps good time. Friends donated components in similar condition, including a cardboard glove box, and he topped it off with a bird's nest. A mangled and rusted "W" pre-1957 decklid hangs on another wall.
Even though John works on small cars, he says, "I'm planning on expanding the garage next year, about eight feet on one side, and out the back. Everybody knows you never have enough space."

This article originally appeared in the July, 2006 issue of Hemmings Motor News.